drawing-room windows when we hear her little
cough in the porch; Amanda will ask mamma
for a holiday, and even beard papa with a
draper's bill. Amanda will do anything, and
consequently has everything to do; but
Drusilla walks through life scot-free, with only
half her duties strapped to her shoulders,
and shaking those so vehemently that they
sit loosely at the last, and drop off on the
road for others to pick up and carry. If she
could only shake off the iron of her evil
nature as well, it would be more to the purpose.
It is true, however, that the real master of the
house, whether it be wife, child, relative, or
servant, is the one with the worst temper.
This is the domestic slave-driver — this is the
family turnkey, before whom all the rest stand
shivering in their chains. Once establish a
reputation for evil temper, and you may deal in
chains to the end of your days, and live on the
softest cushions of ease unmolested; but mark
you! you will not deal in LOVE! And when you
glide off from your cushions of ease into the hard
elm coffin gaping for you at the end, you will glide
off, unwept and unregretted — the released spirits
of your victims singing Jubilate in full chorus, as
they escape through the door of your tomb into
the freedom you have so long denied them.

There are smaller fetters than these; little
linklets, with the power, certainly, of fostering
sore places; but only small sores, of no
importance to the vital state; not big ulcers
or huge wounds like the other chains already
spoken of. The regularity of home hours
is such a sore to some erratic spirits,
indifferent to the march of time, or the punctual
appearance of the bread and butter. I have
known more than one chronological Bohemian
who held the dinner-hour, and the breakfast-
hour, and the hour of shutting up the house,
and turning off the gas—no latch-keys allowed
—as chains of many hundred-weight, under the
burden of which life was not worth having. And
I have known other Bohemians — these were
Bohemians in the courts of the tailors and the
milliners—groan over the grievance of a dress-coat,
or a pair of white gloves, or dress-boots —corns
notwithstanding — as if an Atlantic cable had
been run out full forty fathoms, and were weighing
a world's weight of cold iron on their necks.

Then, what a fetter is jealousy! What gyves
and manacles and bullets and leg-irons come out
of that grim psychological forge! Worse than
temper, which causes a voluntary imposition of
chains through the instinct of self-defence.
Jealousy is the armed jailer of the whole
world — the Charon of the flood of life, ferrying
souls across the Styx to Hades; the Cerberus
standing guard against liberty everywhere, and
yelping down all manifestation of free will, as
terriers yelp at ground birds, believing them to
be rats. There is no kind of fetter in which
jealousy does not deal; from the tightest curb,
tight and strong enough to break Behemoth's
jaw, to the slightest little steel links, sharp and
light and cutting into the flesh on the smallest
strain. Nothing is too mean for jealousy to
imagine, and very little too base to be accomplished.
Admit this into your spiritual circulation, and
you have admitted the venom which will poison
all the rest. I do not believe in love, in unselfishness,
in truth, or in purity, where jealousy is
the basis of the character: this being to me the
grossest passion of the whole faulty human
series. I do not mean that jealousy of despair
where there is cause; but the causeless distrust,
the sleepless suspicion, the envy at any ray of
loving light falling on another, the hunting after
evil and the making up of evil substance out of
shadows, which constitute the lower form of
jealousy as cherished by the lower class of minds.

But all chains are not galling. Pleasant
are the fetters of gratitude, and God bless
the loved chain-maker! Pleasant are those
of friendship, with its precious obligations of
sympathy and help and the sharing of the heavy
burden and the aiding in the gladness of joy;
pleasant are the chains of reverence bowing
your head meekly before the nobler stature, and
bending your knee humbly before the grander
life; pleasant are the fetters of duty — ay,
pleasant to the released soul, poor Andromeda!
when the hour of Perseus has arrived, and the
reward of patient bearing with it! Pleasant is
the small sweet chain woven by the light touch
of baby fingers; pleasant are the fetters lying all
across the nursery floor—those gracious fetters!
through which shine bright blue eyes, and round
which are twined soft locks of golden hair—
fetters woven in and out by rapid hands, and
twinkling feet, and fresh young voices crying out
aloud the child's dear Hosannas to the brightness
and the beauty of life! Pleasant are all the fetters,
however many, and however strict, wherein Love
sits bound; for Love is, after Good, the greatest
antiseptic of this life, and keeps souls freest
from the pollutions of the world, the flesh, and
the devil. We do well to honour the chains
which he has woven, and to submit to the
fetters which he imposes; for if we would be
free from fear and strife and jealousy and
despair, let us love something more than we
love ourselves. Whether it be father or mother
or brother or sister, wife, husband, child, or
friend, whom we love, in loving we have plucked
forth the Hope which never escaped from
Pandora's box, and have accepted the chain which
will bind us into all joy and delight.

A VISIT TO A RUSSIAN PRISON.

WE were all standing round the piano one
evening, singing that pretty Russian gipsy song,
"The post-house lamp had died away," when M.
Billet, the proprietor of our hotel, the most
comfortable one in Moscow, returned from his weekly
vapour-bath, and aided us, as a basso profondo
gipsy troika-driver, with his powerful voice.

M. Billet was a robust Swiss, with a round
close-shaved head. His good-natured face was
beaded with perspiration; his flesh looked as
red as if it had been parboiled, and a steaming
glow arose from, his broad massy forehead.